Lean bureaucracies, digital government, and impeccable execution

Tag Archives: Lean Bureaucracy

The government provides oversight over projects and programs. Interestingly, this oversight often happens outside of the normal reporting structure of the government agencies. It is considered important for these overseers to be independent – not part of the organization that is sponsoring or administering the project. While this allows for some objectivity, it also means that the overseers have little “skin in the game” – they do not have to live with the consequences of their decisions. The team running the program does.

Now suppose – this is theoretical, of course, and would never happen in any situation I am familiar with, ahem – suppose that the oversight body imposed substantial burdens on the programs it oversaw. Suppose that it demanded extensive documentation that no one ever read, nit-picked on the format of the documentation, imposed supposed “best practices” that were not actually best practices, and frequently asked for data or status updates that distracted those managing the program. Suppose further that the overseers themselves were not always efficient; held up the programs while they tried to schedule review meetings, gave the programs contradictory direction, and argued amongst themselves or prepared inadequately for review meetings. The problem could be exacerbated if the overseers did not themselves have the experience of running programs, and therefore their understanding of best practices was at best theoretical, at worst superstitious.

If that – ahem – ever happened, then given the power oversight bodies have, they would essentially be ordering the programs to waste money. They might also add risk to programs. Since the job of the oversight body is ostensibly the opposite – to prevent waste and mismanagement – this could be a critical issue. What controls are in place to prevent this? Is the oversight body perhaps incentivized to make “corrections” to the programs to demonstrate its own usefulness?

Because the oversight bodies are not “inline” with the management structure over the program, they have no obligation to cultivate the program team as employees. They do not need to encourage program staff, deal with any issues of demoralization, provide positive feedback, make a comfortable work environment that will attract more great performers into program management. Oversight in such an environment runs the danger of focusing on negativity and control, rather than on successful execution.

How can we improve this? Oversight bodies must be measured by the success of the programs they oversee, not by their willingness to cancel failing programs. They must be composed of people who are experts – not in overseeing programs, but in executing them. They must work to optimize their processes and to minimize the waste they add to programs, and must solicit feedback from programs to understand what waste they are causing. What I am saying is that oversight must createvalue for programs, and only the programs can judge whether they do.

Government oversight bodies take great pride in canceling failing projects. They consider it a measure of success. What are oversight bodies for? Eliminating wasteful investments, of course. At first glance this might seem to be consistent with an agile mindset. Among the advantages of an agile approach are the transparency given to stakeholders and the ability to manage risk by working in increments. Only the current increment is at risk, since the project can be stopped before the next increment begins. Problems are exposed through transparency and oversight can take advantage of the incremental approach to stop a failing project.

This way of thinking is a mistake. The project was started because of a mission need. Canceling the project leaves that mission need unmet. Oversight has failed in two senses: (1) it failed to make the project successful, and (2) it did not allow a mission need to be met, one that was important enough to have invested in. If, in fact, the mission need is important, then a new project will have to be started to address that same need. The new project will have the overhead of starting up a new program, thereby wasting more money. Instead of canceling the program, the oversight body should shift the course of the current program to make it more successful.

But isn’t that throwing more money into a wasteful program? No – what has been spent so far is a sunk cost, and there may be some salvageable assets. Doesn’t the program’s failure to date mean that it is poorly managed? Not necessarily, but if it is, the oversight body should simply force the program management to change, not cancel the program. In many cases the problem is not management, but circumstances outside their control. The oversight body should help the program overcome those outside forces. Terminating the program is just a way to punish the program’s management, and adds waste for the government as a whole.

Why cancel a successful program? If a program has delivered substantial value to date, then the oversight body should consider whether the remaining work of the program is necessary. If the program’s work was appropriately prioritized, then there should be diminishing returns to continuing the program. Oversight should constantly reassess the value of the remaining work, and see if the agency’s needs have changed in a way that the remaining work is no longer worth the investment. If the oversight body decides that this is the case, it should cancel the remainder of the program and rejoice – for this it can legitimately claim an oversight success!

The government needs to give up on the idea of parity between paper forms and electronic forms. This one concept alone is holding back Digital Services and public-centric offerings more than any other.

As I mentioned in my last post, The Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) of 1998 tried to establish electronic interactions as equivalent to paper. In 1998, this might have been forward-leaning, but in 2015 it just doesn’t go far enough. Because much of government policy has been based around paper forms, it requires a creative leap of the imagination to treat electronic forms and online interactions as something different and better. But the two channels have a major difference: electronic forms can be interactive, while paper forms can never be. Interactivity requires different ways of thinking. Instead, much of our government process, including the implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), effectively forces us to dispense with any interactivity, for the specious reason that it would make electronic interaction different from paper.

Let me give a few illustrations of how channel parity holds us back from what is considered normal customer service. Online forms generally validate user input as it is entered – they check for mistakes that would result in denied applications and database integrity issues. But validation is something that paper cannot do – the public can submit paper applications that have silly errors in them. So “parity thinking” requires that we allow them to make the same mistakes electronically. In fact, we could often go further than simple validation – if the user is applying for something that they are patently unqualified for, our online form could in some cases let them know immediately and save them the trouble and cost of applying. But paper applications do not do this, so it is disallowed or frowned upon.

There are cases where we could help the applicant fill out an application by providing data that we already know or can look up for them. For example, if they are applying to replace a green card, we could look up the information from their previous card, ask what has changed, ask for proof of those changes, and produce the card. Instead, we have them enter from scratch much of the information on the card, as they would on paper, then check to see if it matches what we already know.

I understand that there are legal and policy issues involved here. I’m just suggesting that those reflect an old way of thinking that no longer aligns with a world that has changed. We should be looking for ways to change those laws and policies. Perhaps a “Government Interactivity Preference Act”?

We so often about “bloated bureaucracies” that the two words seem to belong together. Webster’s even uses the expression as a usage example in its definition of bureaucracy: “Both candidates pledge to simplify the state’s bloated bureaucracy.”

It might seem strange, then, that the sociologist Max Weber in his 1920 book The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, claimed that “experience tends universally to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administrative organization … is, from a purely technical point of view, capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency and is in this sense formally the most rational known means of carrying out imperative control over human beings” (337). In his view bureaucracy was the application of knowledge and expertise rather than capriciousness in an organization. “Indeed, almost all the benefits we take for granted in today’s society—modern medicine, modern science, modern industry—rest on a bureaucratic foundation” (p233).

If the government bureaucracy is bloated, can it be un-bloated? What if we were to look at government processes through the lens of lean management technique? Could we apply Lean Startup ideas, and use Lean Software Development to IT needs, and take a Lean Six Sigma knife to the government? Could we trim out all of the waste? (What would be left then?)

The U.S. federal government spends about $82 billion each year on information technology investments. Does the public receive good value for this investment? There are really two questions here: (1) Is the money spent effectively? (2) Is it spent on the right things? The technology environment has changed greatly over the last few decades, as have the country’s needs. Perhaps more importantly, management theory and best practices have changed as well. Has the U.S. government changed to keep pace? Has it incorporated best practices from the private sector, or even from other governments? Is it making the most effective use of its technology to deliver value to its public?

I am not just asking about whether the government is up to date in adopting new gizmos and products that are being invented. I’m asking whether the government is managing its technology investments in the best possible way, and whether it is focused on the right investments.

I hope to start a discussion on these topics by drawing on a number of strains of contemporary thinking, including: agile and lean software development, continuous delivery and DevOps, cloud infrastructure, adaptive leadership, Government 2.0, open data, crowdsourcing, and the work being done by the UK federal IT staff.

Please note that all opinions expressed here are my personal opinions, not those of the government agency I happen to be employed by. I am blogging as an individual citizen, not in my role as a government employee.